Studied by 11 peopleLadinos
- Free and enslaved Africans familiar with Iberian culture
- Travelled with Europeans in their earliest explorations of the Americas
- A generation known as Atlantic Creoles
Atlantic Creoles
- Worked as intermediaries
- Were familiar with multiple languages, cultural norms, and commercial practices --> had some social mobility
How did black participation in America's colonization begin?
Resulted from Spain's early role in the slave trade and the presence of enslaved and free Africans in the parties of Spanish explorers who laid claim to "La Florida" (included Florida, South Carolina, and Georgia)
What were the major roles of Africans in the Americas in the 15th and 16th centuries?
- Conquistadors - participated in work of conquest, hoping to gain freedom
- Enslaved laborers - worked in mining and agriculture
- Free skilled workers & artisans
Juan Garrido
- Conquistador born in Kingdom of Kongo, moved to Lisbon, Portugal
- First known African to arrive in North America when he explored present-day Florida during a Spanish expedition in 1513
- Maintained his freedom by serving in Spanish military, helping conquer Indigenous groups
Estevanico (Esteban)
- Enslaved African healer from Morocco
- Forced to work in 1528 as explorer and translator in Texas and in territory that became southwestern US
- Killed by Indigenous groups resisting Spanish colonialism
Transatlantic Slave Trade
- Lasted over 350 years (early 1500s - mid 1800s)
- More than 12.5 million enslaved Africans forcibly transported to Americas
- Portugal, Great Britain, France, Spain, and the Netherlands were top enslaving nations involved in Transatlantic Slave Trade
Where did enslaved Africans transported directly to mainland North America come from?
- Senegambia
- Sierra Leone
- Liberia
- Ivory Coast
- Ghana
- Benin
- Nigeria
- Angola
- Mozambique
Ethnic and Religious Backgrounds of Enslaved Africans in the U.S.
- Ancestors of early generations of African Americans in mainland North America from numerous West and Central African ethnic groups
EX: the Wolof (Senegambia), Akan (Ghana), Igbo, Yoruba (Nigeria)
- Around half of enslaved people in U.S. from Muslim and Christian backgrounds
What was the result of the distribution patterns of African ethnic groups throughout the American South?
Created diverse Black communities with unique combinations of African-based cultural practices, languages, and beliefs
Slave Narratives
- Allowed formerly enslaved Africans to detail their experiences
- Serve as historical accounts and examine their experiences through interdisciplinary lens
- Political texts --> aimed to end slavery and the slave trade, demonstrate Black humanity, and advocate for the inclusion of people of African descent in American society
Olaudah Equiano
- AKA Gustavus Vassa
- Supported the abolitionist movement in London
- Part of the abolitionist group: the Sons of Africa
- His 1789 autobiography, The Interesting Narrative, gained popularity among scholars in the late 20th century and remains a useful primary source
Philis Wheatley
- The first African American to publish a poetry book
- Her iconic portrait, attributed to the enslaved African American painter Scipio Moorehead, is the first known individual portrait of an African American
First Part of Transatlantic Slave Trade
- Africans captured and marched from interior states to the Atlantic coast
- On the coast, they waited in crowded + unsanitary dungeons
Second Part of Transatlantic Slave Trade (THE MIDDLE PASSAGE)
- Involved traveling across the Atlantic Ocean
- Established permanent separation from their communities
- Aboard slave ships, African humiliated, beaten, tortured, raped, suffered from diseases and malnourishment
- 15% of captive Africans perished during this part
Third/Final Part of Transatlantic Slave Trade
Those who arrived at ports in the Americas were quarantined, resold, and transported domestically to distant locations to servitude
How did the slave trade impact relationships between African kingdoms?
- Slave trade increased monetary incentives to use violence to enslave neighboring societies
- Wars between kingdoms worsened by prevalence of firearms received from trade with Europeans
- Europeans traded guns for gold
--> guns allowed African states to expand
- Asante used its army to capture slaves for sale
- The Oyo became involved in the slave trade
- The Fon (Kingdom of Dahomey) was a center for the slave trade
How were different African states impacted by trade?
- Coastal states became wealthy from trade in goods and people
- Interior states became unstable under the constant threat of capture and enslavement
- To maintain local dominance and grow their wealth, African leaders sold soldiers and war captives from opposing ethnic groups...weakening those villages
--> (In somes areas of the Americas, this led to a concentration of former African soldiers, which aided enslaved communities ability to revolt)
What were the primary consequences of the slave trade?
African societies suffered from:
- Long term instability
- Loss of kin who would have assumed leadership roles in their communities, raised families, and passed on their traditions
What did the UN establish March 25th as?
(April 2008)
UN established March 25th as the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the TransAtlantic Slave Trade
Slave Ship Diagrams
- Depict the arrangement of captives that aimed to maximize profit by transporting as many people as possible
- In 18th and 19th centuries, they created a visual archive of commodification by depicting individual Africans as an anonymous, homogenous, group of fungible goods for sale
Commodification
The action or process of treating something as a mere commodity
Homogenous
All the same
Fungible
Easily replaced
Diagram of Slave ship Brookes
- Thomas Clarkson, an abolitionist, first published the diagram in 1788
- Diagram depicted conditions aboard the slave ship "Brookes"
- Has become an iconic image of the inhumanity of the trade in enslaved people
How have Black visual and performance artists employed the iconography of the slave ship?
They have repurposed the iconography (visual images and symbols used in a work of art) of the slave ship to:
- Process historical trauma
- Honor the memory of their ancestors
- Today, the icon of the slave ship embodies a pivotal development in the shared history of communities of African descent --> the birth of a global diaspora
Stowage of the British slave ship Brookes, early 19th century
- By contemporary artist Willie Cole
- Uses an everyday item (an iron) to symbolize the history of his ancestors (Enslaved Africans participated in domestic labor)
- The detailed vertical faces of the iron represent the various African communities that would have traveled in a slave ship
- The horizontal image represents the ship itself
La Bouche Du Roi (Mouth of the King),
- By contemporary artist Ronald Hazoume
- Uses an everyday item (plastic gas containers) to represent 304 masks, each with an open mouth, eyes, and nose
- Two masks at the stern of the ship represent the white king imposed on Benin and the native king dealing with African and European responsibility for trade
- Liquor bottles, bead, cowrie shells, tobacco, and spices examples of material used to barter for slaves
How did African captives aboard slave ships resist?
- Resisted the trauma of deracination, commodification, and enslavement individually and collectively
- staged hunger strikes
- Attempted to jump overboard
- Overcame linguistic barriers to form revolts
What was the result of Africans' resistance?
- Made the slave trade more expensive and dangerous
- Led to changes in the design of slave ships (EX: construction of barricades and inclusion of nets and guns)
- The Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves of 1807 banned the African slave trade, making it illegal to import any further enslaved people into the U.S.
Slave Revolt Aboard La Amistad
- Led by Joseph Cinquè/Sengbe Pieh (Mende captive from Sierra Leone)
- Enslaved Africans took over La Amistad
- After a trial that lasted 2 years, the Supreme Court granted the Mende captives their freedom
- Trial generated public sympathy for the cause of abolition
Resistance in Slave Auctions
Those who resisted sale at auction punished severely by whipping, torture, and mutilation (often in front of others)
What did African American writers do?
- Sought to counter enslavers' claims that slavery was a benign institution
- Sought to advance the cause of abolition
- Highlighted the physical and emotional effects of being sold to unknown places and people through various literary genres
Solomon Northup's description of the New Orleans Slave Market, 1841
Solomon Northup, a free Black musician who was captured and illegally sold into slavery, provided an eyewitness account in his narrative, "Twelve Years a Slave"
Cotton Gin
- Increased U.S. production, profits, and dependency on cotton as a cash crop (and the importance and number of enslaved laborers)
- The forced removal of Indigenous communities by U.S. government through the Trail of Tears made lands available for large-scale cotton production
What happened after the U.S. government formally banned the transatlantic slave trade in 1808?
- Enslaved population grew primarily through childbirth rather than new importations
- Increased the supply of enslaved agricultural laborers
Slavery in the Lower South
- Lower South (South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas) dominated by the slave-cotton system
- Enslaved African Americans especially valuable as commodities due to demand for laborers
- Created an internal "middle passage"
What was the result of the cotton boom in the first half of the 19th century.
- Many African Americans forcibly relocated through the domestic slave trade from upper South (inland states like Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Missouri) to lower South
- Marching hundreds of miles, over 1 million African Americans were displaced by this "Second Middle Passage"
- This was the largest forced migration in American history
Enslaved People and Types of Labor
- Performed a wide variety of domestic, agricultural, and skilled labor
- In some areas, there were distinct roles separating domestic and agricultural laborers (enslaved persons could be reallocated to another type of labor according to preferences of their enslaver)
- Many relied on skills developed in Africa, such as rice cultivation in the "low country" of Georgia and South Carolina
Enslaved People and Special Skills
- Learned specialized trades and worked as painters, carpenters, tailors, musicians, and healers
- Once free, used these skills for income
- Some bound to institutions such as churches, factories, and colleges, rather than to an individual person
Broadside advertising "Valuable Slaves at Auction" in New Orleans, 1859
Illustrates the wide range of tasks enslaved people performed, their ages, and other traits, such as the languages spoken and their racial designations
Rice fanner basket, c. 1863
- Conveys the transfer of agricultural and artistic knowledge from Africa to the U.S.
- The coiled features of African American basket-making traditions in the Lowcountry resemble those currently made in Senegal and Angola
Gang System of Slavery
- Enslaved laborers worked in groups from sunup to sundown
- Under watch and discipline of an overseer
- Cultivated crops like cotton, sugar, and tobacco
- Enslaved people working in gangs created work songs (in English) with syncopated rhythms to keep the pace of work
Task System of Slavery
- Enslaved people worked individually until they met a daily quota
- Generally with less supervision
- Used for cultivation of crops like rice and indigo
- With less oversight, some enslaved people found the autonomy to maintain linguistic practices, such as the Gullah creole language that developed in the Carolina Lowcountry
Slavery and the Economy
- Slavery fostered economic interdependence between North and South
- Cities that didn't play major role in slave trade still benefited from the economy created by slavery
- Enslaved people were foundational to the American economy even though they and their descendants were alienated from the wealth that they embodied and produced
How has slavery contributed to wealth disparities between races?
- Enslaved African Americans had no wages to pass down to descendants
- Had no legal right to accumulate property
- Individual exceptions to these laws depended on their enslavers' decisions
What was significant about Article 1 and Article 4 of the U.S. Constitution?
- They refer to slavery but avoid using the terms slave or slavery
- "Slave" appeared in an early draft but was removed
(These terms appear for the first time in the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which abolished slavery
Slave Codes
Defined slavery as:
- Race-based
- Inheritable
- Lifelong condition
And included restrictions against:
- Freedom of movement
- Congregation
- Possessing weapons
- Wearing fine fabrics, among other activities
(These regulations manifested in slaveholding societies throughout the Americas, including the Code Noir and Código Negro in French and Spanish colonies)
How did legislation in U.S. states impact African Americans?
- Some free states enacted laws to deny African Americans opportunities for advancement
- Some states enacted restrictions to keep free Black men from voting (e.g., New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut) and testifying against White people in court (e.g., Ohio)
- By 1870, only Wisconsin and Iowa had given Black men the right to vote with the ratification of the 15th Amendment
South Carolina's 1740 slave code
- Updated in response to enslaved peoples' resistance during the Stono Rebellion in 1739
- Classified all Black people and Indigenous communities that didn't submit to the colonial government as non-subjects and presumed enslaved people
- Prohibited enslaved people from gathering, drumming, running away, learning to read, or rebelling
- Condemned to death any enslaved person who tried to defend themselves from attack by a White person
Dred Scott's Freedom Suit (1857)
- Resulted in the Supreme Court's decision that enslaved and free African Americans were not and could never become U.S. citizens
- Overturned by the Reconstruction Amendments (13th, 14th, 15th)
Louisiana Code Noir
- Contained similar restrictions as South Carolina slave code
- Greater emphasis on Catholic instruction and regulations that acknowledged the possibility of marriage between enslaved people but forbid interracial relationships
Voting Status of Black Men in 1860
Could only vote in five of the six New England states (Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire).
Partus Sequitur Ventrem
- 17th century law that defined child's legal status based on status of its mother & held significant consequences for enslaved African Americans
- Codified hereditary racial slavery in the U.S. by ensuring that enslaved African American women's children would inherit their status as property ---> invalidated African Americans' claims to their children
- Designed to prohibit mixed-race children of Black women from inheriting free status of their father
- Gave male enslavers right to deny responsibility for children they fathered with enslaved women and to commodify enslaved women's reproductive lives
Miscegenation
Biological reproduction by partners of different racial categories
Where did concepts and classifications of racial types emerge from?
- Emerged in combination with laws enforcing systems of enslavement
- Phenotype (skin color, hair texture, etc.) contributes largely to perceptions of racial identity
- Legal statutes like partus sequitur ventrem defined racial categories and tied them to rights and status to perpetuate slavery over generations
Hypodescent
- Hypodescent: categorizing biracial individuals as belonging more to minority racial categories
- In U.S. race classifications determined on basis of hypodescent
- In late 19th and 20th centuries, the "one-drop rule" classified a person with any degree of African descent as part of a singular, inferior status
- Many African Americans had European or Indigenous ancestry, but race classification prohibited them from embracing multiracial/multi-ethnic heritage.
Bacon's Rebellion (1676)
- The last major uprising of enslaved Black and White indentured servants in Colonial Virginia
- Failed
- Intensified African slavery and the social separation of Black and White people in Virginia
Elizabeth Key
- In 1656, Elizabeth Key (White father, enslaved Black mother) became the first Black woman in North America to sue for her freedom and win
- In 1662, legal doctrine of partus sequitur ventrem passed by the General Assembly of Virginia and spread throughout 13 colonies
Religious practices among enslaved and free Afro-descendants
- Took many forms and served social, spiritual, and political purposes
- Some enslaved people followed belief systems from Africa
- Others blended faith traditions (syncretism) from Africa with those they encountered in the Americas
- Others adhered to Christianity and Islam but practiced in their own way
Religion and Resistance
- Religious services and churches became sites for community gathering, celebration, mourning, sharing info, and in the North, political organizing
- Religion inspired slave rebellions such as those led by Nat Turner and Denmark Vesey and the activism of abolitionists like Maria Stewart, Frederick Douglass, and Henry Highland Garnet.
Nat Turner's Rebellion
- AKA Southampton Insurrection
- Southampton County, Virginia in August 1831
- Rebels killed 55 - 65 White people --> deadliest slave revolt in U.S. history
Denmark Vesey
- Free Black and community leader in Charleston, South Carolina
- Accused and convicted of planning a major slave revolt in 1822
Spirituals
- Combined musical and faith traditions in U.S.
- Songs enslaved people sang to articulate their hardships and hopes
- Often had double meanings --> used biblical themes of redemption and liberation to alert enslaved people of opportunities to escape via Underground Railroad
Used by enslaved people to:
- Resist the dehumanizing conditions and injustice of enslavement
- Express their creativity
- Communicate strategic info, such as plans to run away, warning, and methods of escape
African performative elements are present in...
the ring shout found among the Gullah Geechee community in Georgia and South Carolina
Steal Away (spiritual from mid-19th century)
Documented and composed by Wallace Willis, a formerly enslaved Black person in Choctaw territory in Mississippi who was displace to Oklahoma territory during Trail of Tears
What inspired African American creative expression?
- African American creative expression drew upon blended influences from ancestors, community members, and local European and Indigenous cultures
- African descendants in U.S. added their aesthetic influenced as they made pottery and established a tradition of quilt making as a medium of storytelling and memory keeping
Music in African American Communities
- African Americans drew from varied African and European influences in construction of instruments such as the banjo, drums, and rattles from gourds to recreate instruments similar to those in West Africa
- Adopted Christian hymns they learned and combined rhythmic and performative elements from Africa (e.g., call and response, clapping, improvisation) with biblical themes
--> Created distinct American musical genre
--> Became the foundation of later American music genres (gospel and the blues)
How did Senegambian and West Central Africans influence the development of American blues?
- Senegambians (such as the Wolof and Mandinka) and West Central Africans arrived in large numbers in Louisiana
- American blues contains the same musical system as fodet from the Senegambia region
Storage jar by David Drake, 1858
- David Drake - enslaved potter in South Carolina
- Defied bans on literacy for African Americans
- Exercised creative expression by inscribing short poems on the jars he created
What was the result of the U.S. ban on international slave trading in 1808?
- Percentage of African- born people in the African American population declined
(importing of enslaved Africans continued illegally)
The American Colonization Society
- Founded by White leaders seeking to exile growing free Black population to Africa
- In response, many Black people emphasized their American identity by rejecting the term African
Lincoln's Disastrous Effort to Get Black People to Leave the U.S.
- Lincoln relocated 453 formerly enslaved to Île à Vache ("Cow Island"), a small island off the southwestern coast of Haiti in 1863.
- By summer of 1863, news of the inhumane conditions reached Lincoln
- 1864 - he sent a naval vessel to rescue the 350 surviving emigrants back to America
Colored Conventions
- Beginning in 1830s, African Americans began to hold political meetings called Colored Conventions across U.S. and Canada
- Emphasized their shared heritage and housed debates about identity and self-identification in African American communities
What did advocates of radical resistance believe in/do?
- Believed in overthrowing slavery through direct action, including revolts and, if necessary, violence
- Leveraged publications that detailed the horrors of slavery to encourage enslaved African Americans to use any tactic to achieve freedom.
--> Anti- slavery pamphlets smuggled into South as radical resistance tactic
Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World by David Walker, 1829
- Exposed hypocrisies of American claims of freedom and Christianity
- Attacked the plan to colonize Black Americans in Africa
- Predicted that God's justice promised violence for the enslaving U.S.
- Rejected idea of emigration to Africa
- Countered Thomas Jefferson's arguments in "Notes on the State of Virginia"—namely that African Americans were inferior by nature, benefitted from slavery, were incapable of self-government, and, if freed, should emigrate
The National Negro Convention of 1843
- Buffalo, New York.
- 27 yr old Henry Highland Garnet, a newspaper editor and pastor, delivered "An Address to the Slaves of the United States," in which he called for their open rebellion
- Speech failed by 1 vote of being endorsed by convention
Henry Highland Garnet
- Came to support African American emigration in the mid-19th century
- Helped establish the Cuban Anti-Slavery Society in New York (1872)
- Appointed U.S. minister to Liberia after Civil War
- His wife, Julia Williams Garnet, was also a leading abolitionist --> co authored his famous speech and founded an industrial school for girls in Jamaica.
Underground Railroad
- Covert network of Black and White abolitionists who provided transportation, shelter, and other resources to help enslaved people fleeing the South resettle in free territories in the U.S. North, Canada, and Mexico in the 19th century
- ~ 30,000 African Americans reached freedom through the Underground Railroad
- As result, Congress enacted the Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850, authorizing local governments to legally kidnap and return escaped refugees to their enslavers
The Abolitionist Movement in the U.S. (1830 - 1870)
- Advocated for end of slavery
- Led by Black activists and White supporters
- Spread by a number of existing churches + organizations created for this cause
- Abolitionists utilized speeches and publications to stimulate public sentiment and to engage in debates with those who upheld slavery
Harriet Tubman
- A conductor of Underground Railroad
- After fleeing enslavement, returned to South ~ 19 times, leading about 80 enslaved African Americans to freedom
- Sang spirituals to alert enslaved people of plans to leave
How was photography employed by African Americans?
- In 19th century, African American leaders embraced photography to counter stereotypes about Black people by portraying themselves as citizens worthy of dignity, respect, and equal rights
- Sojourner Truth sold her carte-de-visites (small photograph) to raise money for abolitionist cause + activities such as speaking tours and recruiting Black soldiers to Union army --> Her photos showcased centrality of Black women's leadership in fight for freedom
- Frederick Douglass most photographed man of the 19th century
- Photos of Frederick Douglass & Harriet Tubman demonstrated Black achievement and potential through freedom
Why do contemporary African American artists draw from Black aesthetic tradition?
To integrate historical, religious, and gender perspectives in representations of African American leaders --> their works preserve the legacy of these leaders' bravery and resistance
African American Women and Rape
- Laws against rape didn't apply to enslaved African American women -
Some resisted sexual abuse and the enslavement of their children by:
- Fighting their attackers
- Using plants as abortion-inducing drugs
- Infanticide
- Running away with their children
Narratives by Formerly Enslaved African American Women
- Conveyed their distinct experiences of constant vulnerability to sexual violence and exploitation
- Reflected 19th-century gender norms.
- Focused on domestic life, modesty, family, and resistance against sexual violence
(narratives by enslaved men emphasized autonomy and manhood)
How did Black women activists contribute to abolitionism?
- Called attention to how they experienced combined effects of race and gender discrimination
- Fought for abolitionism and the rights of women, paving path for women's suffrage movement.
- By highlighting connected nature of race, gender, and class in their experiences, their activism anticipated political debates that remain central to African American politics
St. Augustine
- Founded in Florida in 1565
- Oldest continuously occupied settlement of African American and European origin in U.S.
- Beginning in 17th century, enslaved refugees escaping Georgia and the Carolinas fled to St. Augustine, seeking asylum in Spanish Florida, which offered freedom to enslaved people who converted to Catholicism
Fort Mose
- In 1738, governor of Spanish Florida established a fortified settlement under leadership of Francisco Menéndez, an enslaved Senegambian who fought against English in Yamasee War and found refuge in St. Augustine
- First sanctioned free Black town in what is now the U.S.
- British colonial forces invaded Florida, eventually seizing and destroying Fort Mose (1740)
What was the result of the emancipation from slavery offered by Spanish Florida to slaves fleeing the British colonies?
- Inspired the Stono Rebellion in South Carolina (1739)
- Led by Jemmy, an enslaved man from the Angola region
- ~ 100 enslaved African Americans set fire to plantations and marched toward sanctuary in Spanish Florida
Fort Mose Artifacts
Shed light on the fact that Fort Mose was NOT isolated and was in fact a diverse community
Haitian Revolution (1791-1804)
- Only uprising of enslaved people that resulted in overturning a colonial, slaveholding government
- Transformed a European colony (Saint-Domingue) into a Black republic free of slavery (Haiti)
- Created the second independent nation in the Americas, after the U.S.
Broad Impact of Haitian Revolution
- France lost the most profitable colony in the Caribbean.
- Cost of fighting Haitians led Napoleon to sell Louisiana Territory to U.S. (increased land available for slavery)
- France temporarily abolished slavery (from 1794 to 1802) throughout empire
- Destruction of plantation slavery complex in Haiti shifted opportunities in market for sugar production to U.S., Cuba, and Brazil
- Brought influx of White planters and enslaved Black refugees to U.S. cities (Baltimore, New York, Philadelphia) and increased fear of slave revolts
How did the Haitian Revolution inspire slave revolts in the U.S.?
- Haiti's independence and abolition of slavery highlighted the unfulfilled promises of the American Revolution
- Inspired uprisings such as the Louisiana Slave Revolt (1811), one of the largest on U.S. soil, and the Malê Uprising of Muslim slaves (1835), one of the largest revolts in Brazil
Article 14 of the 1805 Haitian Constitution
- Declared all citizens of Haiti to be Black
- By uniting the multiethnic residents of the island under a single racial category, it removed ethno-racial distinctions and reframed Black as an identity that signified citizenship and belonging
Frederick Douglass's Involvement in Haiti
Frederick Douglass was appointed General Consul and U.S. Minister to Haiti (1889-1891) by U.S. President Benjamin Harrison
Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic)
- In 1526, Africans enslaved here were brought to aid Spanish exploration along the South Carolina-Georgia coastline
- Led earliest known slave revolt in what is now U.S. territory and escaped into nearby Indigenous communities
Charles Deslondes
- Led German Coast Uprising (AKA Louisiana Revolt of 1811) --> largest slave revolt in U.S.
- Organized support across local plantations and maroon communities and led them on a march toward New Orleans.
- Some who participated were beheaded with their heads staked on poles to intimidate other enslaved people
Madison Washington
- Enslaved cook,
- (1841) led a mutiny aboard slave ship: Creole, which transported enslaved people from Virginia to New Orleans.
- Washington seized ship and sailed to the Bahamas, since British ended slavery in the West Indian colonies in 1833
How were slave revolts connected?
Shaped by common struggles, inspirations, and goals, a revolt in one region often influenced the circumstances and political actions of enslaved Afro-descendants in another region.
Maroons/Maroon Communities
- Afro-descendants who escaped slavery to establish free communities
- Autonomous spaces where African languages and cultural practices blended and flourished despite challenges
- Beyond U.S., maroon communities in Jamaica, Suriname, Colombia, and Brazil.
- In Spanish colonies, called Cimarrons
- Called palenques in Spanish America and quilombos in Brazil
- The Quilombo dos Palmares, the largest maroon society in Brazil (~100 yrs)
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